M.T. Route Map - Egypt, Palestine & Syria, Second Edition, 1: 1,000,000 (M.D.R. Misc 8048) Restricted

512 Field Survey Company, Royal Engineers

Published by Middle East Drawing and Reproduction (MDR), GHQ Middle East Forces (MEF), (Cairo), 1944

About this Item

Colour printed paper map 115x86cm. Good, quite neatly folded, and apparently displayed with pinholes, some rust residue, paper repair, short closed tears, and loss to corners (not affecting images). An impressive Middle East Forces (MEF) planning chart for Mechanised Transport (M.T.) with 14 local insets, road surface information, mileages, the incidence of malaria, and other practical information about staging posts, cities and towns en route. This was drawn and reproduced by 512 Field Survey Company, Royal Engineers in December 1944, from information supplied by Movements and Transportation, GHQ MEF. The main map covers a significant part of the Middle East Theatre, bounded by Matruh on the Mediterranean (W), Aqaba (SE), and Aleppo (NE), with onward details for Baghdad and elsewhere. It presents a dense colour coded network of routes on a 1/1M scale, supported by a table describing and assessing the quality of road surfaces between several locations, including combinations of metalled, mud, and desert tracks. Other tables give mileages for the region, and more specifically for Alexandria and Baghdad. Details include principal towns, and staging areas with colour coding to show what facilities to expect at each from among water, petrol, D.I.D. (these were Detail Issue Depots responsible for supplying units in forward areas), signal communication, or nothing at all. "Highly Malarious Areas" shaded pink include pretty much all of the Nile Delta, Suez Canal and Jordan Valley, with several long stretches beyond. The inset sketch maps show how to get through Cairo, the Amiriya area, Suez area, Ismailia area, Gaza area, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, the Haifa area, Lydda area, Marjayoun, Tulkarm, Palmyra (including part of the course of the IPC Pipeline), and routes to Baghdad via Abu Kemal. The city plans include locations of practical interest. Beirut for example appears to be very well equipped with sub-area HQ, transit camps (with geographically separate British and Indian Wings), a leave camp, petrol, DID, marshalling yards, railway facilities etc, and a warning that some streets are one-way only. Very rare with 5 copies of this edition located on Worldcat and Library Hub (BL, Oxford, and the National Libraries of Israel, Australia, and New Zealand). They also record the 1st edition (1943) at BL. No other editions are recorded.

Seller Inventory # 6136

Bibliographic Details

• Title: M.T. Route Map - Egypt, Palestine & Syria, Second Edition, 1: 1,000,000 (M.D.R. Misc 8048) Restricted
• Publisher: Middle East Drawing and Reproduction (MDR), GHQ Middle East Forces (MEF), (Cairo)
• Publication Date: 1944
• Language: English
• Binding: No Binding
• Edition: 2nd Edition
• Condition: Good